Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith最新文献

{"title":"Navigating Faith and Science","authors":"Joseph Vukov","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23vukov","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23vukov","url":null,"abstract":"NAVIGATING FAITH AND SCIENCE by Joseph Vukov. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2022. 179 pages. Paperback; $19.99. ISBN: 9780802879615. *Joseph Vukov, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, takes on the relationship between sciences and Christian faith in his engaging book Navigating Faith and Science. Written for a popular audience, Vukov discusses three models for the sciences-faith relationship: conflict, independence, and dialogue. *Ongoing conversation always takes place in the context of a relationship, and I like to think of the sciences-faith relationship as such an ongoing conversation. Conversation in any relationship can be challenging. Similarly for the sciences-faith relationship. Human conversations are dynamic, full of surprising twists and turns, frustrations, joys, and pains. Similarly for conversations among sciences and faith. *Intellectual arrogance negatively affects sciences-faith conversations. Vukov's helpful starting point in chapter 1 frames intellectual humility as crucial to navigating the sciences-faith relationship. He argues that intellectual humility involves \"a cognitive aspect (accurate self-assessment), an emotional aspect (not being caught up in one's own desire to be right), and most importantly, a purposeful aspect (aiming at the truth)\" (p. 15). Vukov has insightful things to say about intellectual humility as a human virtue reflecting appropriate appraisal (Rom. 12:3) of our finitude. He rightly points out that a confident faithful Christian \"is not intellectually arrogant,\" but trusts deeply in God's promises and wisdom (p. 25). How does this help with the sciences-faith relationship? Practicing intellectual humility avoids intellectual arrogance in the sciences-faith relationship. *Vukov discusses conflict in chapter 2, following Ian Barbour in christening a conflict model for the sciences-faith relationship. While Vukov identifies intellectual arrogance as an important source of conflict, this does not explain why conflicts arise. Conflict is possible only on concordance models for the relationship. A concordance model presupposes that along with whatever principles of biblical interpretation we adopt, we also demand that there necessarily must be a correspondence or implication between scientific and faith statements. Think of a jigsaw puzzle, in which scientific and faith statements contribute pieces to the puzzle but also function as constraints for what can fit into the puzzle. *For instance, modern young-Earth creationism presupposes that the statements of Genesis 1 constrain or correct any scientific statements about the age of the earth. In contrast, day-age interpretations presuppose a correlation between the days of Genesis 1 and geological ages. When one reads Genesis 1, assuming that its statements necessarily have correspondence to or implications for scientific statements, conflicts between the sciences and faith arise. The above statement explains why conflict models are","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On Theme Issues: Responsible Technology (PSCF 64, no. 1 [2012]); Artificial Intelligence (PSCF 71, no. 2 [2019]); Transhumanism (PSCF 72, no. 2 [2020]); and James K. A. Smith, \"Science and Religion Take Practice: Engaging Science as Culture\" (PSCF 65, no. 1 [2013]: 3–9)","authors":"Derek C. Schuurman","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23schuurman","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23schuurman","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Natural Philosophy: On Retrieving a Lost Disciplinary Imaginary","authors":"Alister McGrath","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23mcgrath","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23mcgrath","url":null,"abstract":"NATURAL PHILOSOPHY: On Retrieving a Lost Disciplinary Imaginary by Alister McGrath. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2023. 256 pages. Hardcover; $39.95. ISBN: 9780192865731. *In this book, Alister McGrath provides an intellectual history and critique of what is now referred to as natural science, as well as a proposed re-conception of science going forward. The modern conception of science has its roots in something much older, referred to in the premodern world as \"natural philosophy,\" and this older conception--McGrath argues--is one which was both richer and much more integrated with the rest of knowledge than is natural philosophy's contemporary stepchild, \"science.\" The book has two parts. In Part 1, McGrath successfully labors to give an accessible introduction to the historical conception and development of natural philosophy and its trajectory/transformation towards contemporary \"science,\" followed in Part 2 by a proposed direction out of the predicament which he and others see modern/postmodern science to be in. *In Part 1, over the course of five chapters, McGrath first lays out this history. In chapter one, he starts with natural philosophy as an intellectual enterprise finding its origins in the pre-Christian Greeks via Aristotle. In chapter 2, McGrath outlines how natural philosophy then underwent significant development and enrichment through what McGrath calls the \"consolidation\" of natural philosophy up through the high Middle Ages. On this scheme, a study of the natural world was guided first and foremost by a reverence for God, and an impulse to find the operations of the natural world as understood and explained by principles which were consistent with what God has revealed through both scripture and the church. Natural philosophy was therefore seen as but one chapter of a much larger story, in which understanding this story could be had only if one's heart were grounded in religious piety and one's intellect governed by proper theology (as handed down by church hierarchs). *Chapters 3 through 5 outline the ways through which natural philosophy underwent fundamental metamorphosis for the worse. In stages brought about by the sociological effects of the Copernican revolution, the Protestant Reformation, the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, and finally the Darwinian revolution, natural philosophy became disenchanted and dis-integrated from the cohesive place it once held as part of a totalizing theological-cosmological worldview of the premoderns; it devolved into a dis-integrated, compartmentalized, and fragmented version of itself, as evidenced by the ever increasing creation of new \"subdisciplines\" of modern science, which are all largely closed off from one another and which do not enjoy any kind of real synthesis as the premodern intellectual enterprises once did. This modern endeavor, furthermore, seems to be more concerned about extending human's domination over nature (technē) than it is about truly understan","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686674","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On Alan Dickin, \"New Historical and Geological Constraints on the Date of Noah\"s Flood\" (PSCF 70, no. 3 [2018]: 176–93)","authors":"Jitse M. van der Meer","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23vandermeer","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23vandermeer","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On Timothy Larsen, \"'War Is Over, If You Want It\": Beyond the Conflict between Faith and Science\" (PSCF 60, no. 3 [2008]: 147–55)","authors":"Robert C. Bishop","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23bishop","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23bishop","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reaching for Immortality: Can Science Cheat Death? A Christian Response to Transhumanism","authors":"Sandra J. Godde","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23godde","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23godde","url":null,"abstract":"REACHING FOR IMMORTALITY: Can Science Cheat Death? A Christian Response to Transhumanism by Sandra J. Godde. Eugene, OR: Wipf &amp; Stock, 2022. 98 pages. Paperback; $18.00. ISBN: 9781666736748. *This short book considers what it means to live in a world in which transhumanism has taken root. Written from a Christian perspective primarily for a general Christian audience, it is nonetheless also for others who, the author hopes, will be \"inspired by the invitation of Christ to find true and everlasting life in him\" (p. xiv). *Exploring the importance of embodiment (especially from a biblical perspective), the nature of personhood in the technological future, as well as the convergences and divergences between transhumanist and Christian visions, Sandra J. Godde--an artist and lecturer in Christian Studies at Christian Heritage College in Brisbane--takes up the following guiding questions: \"Will cybernetic immortality ever trump the Christian hope of resurrection from the dead and the life of the world to come?,\" and \"Is [transhumanism] desirable for human flourishing, or consistent with faith in biblical redemption?\" The overall objective, here, is \"to resource Christians to think deeply and respond to the transhumanist agenda regarding death and immortality\" (p. 6) as advances in technology continue to form us as human beings (pp. 18-19). *The author begins with a quick and very general overview of transhumanism, summarized as \"man improving himself by merging with technology\" (p. 2). Godde pays particular attention to technological immortality and to the larger question of what, exactly, we ultimately desire for ourselves as individual human beings and, collectively, as a species. *In the first chapter, Godde speaks to how transhumanist ideas have infiltrated popular culture, \"endowing technology with a religious-like significance bordering on worship\" (p. 8). As cases in point, the author goes on to highlight a number of movies and literary pieces, hardly any of which are favorable depictions of technological use by human beings. In the chapters that follow, she goes on to compare and contrast Christian and transhumanist worldviews, looking primarily at the nature of humanhood and creatureliness, the value (or not) of being limited, eschatology, deification, the concept of the imago Dei, and the necessity (or disposability) of the body. *This last point frames much of the discussion. The Christian tradition's affirmation that \"we are our bodies\" (with emphasis here on the centrality of the body in Christian teaching on the Incarnation and the Resurrection) is completely at odds with the transhumanist quest to technologically transform the biological body (or, very simply, to do away with it altogether). Working toward a more perfect, as it were, expression of the imago Dei is quite different, the author notes, from striving to become Homo cyberneticus (p. 19). *Although the penultimate chapter (\"Towards a Christian Ethical Framework\") does not ","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"2013 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On Carol A. Hill, \"Making Sense of the Numbers of Genesis\" (PSCF 55, no. 4 [2003]: 239–51); and Dennis R. Venema, \"Genesis and the Genome: Genomics Evidence for Human-Ape Common Ancestry and Ancestral Hominid Population Sizes\" (PSCF 62, no. 3 [2010): 166–78)","authors":"Roy A. Clouser","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23clouser","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23clouser","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"141 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On Carl E. Armerding, \"Biblical Perspectives on the Ecology Crisis\" (JASA 25, no. 1 [1973]: 4–9)","authors":"Alan G. Padgett","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23padgett","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23padgett","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"On Randy Isaac, \"Assessing the RATE Project\" (PSCF 59, no. 2 [2007]: 143–46); The RATE Group (Larry Vardiman et al.), \"RATE Responds to the Isaac Essay Review\" (PSCF 60, no. 1 [2008]: 35–36); Randy Isaac, \"Isaac Replies\" (PSCF 60, no. 1 [2008]: 36–38); Kirk Bertsche, \"Intrinsic Radiocarbon?\" (PSCF 60, no. 1 [2008]: 38–39); and Robert Rogland, \"Residual Radiocarbon in an Old-Earth Scenario\" (PSCF 59, no. 3 [2007]: 226–28)","authors":"Arnold E. Sikkema","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23sikkema","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23sikkema","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The End of the Law? Law, Theology, and Neuroscience","authors":"D. Opderbeck","doi":"10.56315/pscf3-23opderbeck","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf3-23opderbeck","url":null,"abstract":"THE END OF THE LAW? Law, Theology, and Neuroscience by David W. Opderbeck. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2021. 260 pages. Paperback; $31.00. ISBN: 9781498223898. *\"It's not you but your brain.\" As this powerful meme has begun to characterise our generation, we encounter children under neurological treatment for their behavioral/mental deficits and seniors losing their self-identity due to neurological degeneration. It is indeed evident that our mental experiences are bound to our brain states--yet are we really nothing else than our brain? Many intellectuals of our day argue so--our psyche is an epiphenomenon of our brain state, and so we have no free will. *Recent advances in neuroscience, especially with non-invasive neuroimaging techniques enabling scientists to \"read out\" one's decision ahead of a person being consciously aware of their own decision, have underpinned a new movement called neurolaw. According to neurolawyers, humans are no longer legally or morally accountable for their behaviors as science leaves no room for the existence of free will; consequently, law should be re-oriented from retribution to treatment of criminals. Indeed, neurolaw seeks \"to explain and reform the legal system from the ground up based on neuroscience\" (p. 2). Despite, or because of, its radicality, the neurolaw movement can be an attractive alternate to the legal tradition of Western civilization, which is rapidly losing its Greco-Roman/Christian foundations in law and ethics. It is also in line with the trend that our contemporaries increasingly seek justice through facts/science and empathy instead of transcendent values and rationality. *Although neurolawyers optimistically hope that this shift will lead our world from conflicts in subjective values/beliefs to facts of science, and from moral retribution to humane treatment of criminals, in this book Seton Hall University Law School Professor David Opderbeck carefully considers their optimism legally, philosophically, and theologically--and concludes that, with no place for transcendence, their optimism is misplaced. Neurolaw's reductionism loses not only the place of personal responsibility in law and jurisprudence, but loses a rich and complex understanding of human nature and relationality. Opderbeck argues that theology can defend the transcendence of law and human morality, without losing its integrity to science, by understanding the laws of nature as empowering nature to fulfill its telos--its divine purpose. This move is key to a unified epistemological view on science and law, such that human-made laws empower humans with freedom and personhood--physically, legally, and morally. Consequently, the author reframes positive law (i.e., human-made law) as calling humans to the divine law of love. *In the first three chapters, Opderbeck illustrates how Western law made the historical shift from its foundational transcendent values, through legal positivism, to neurolaw. Contrary to the contemporary jurisprude","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86107151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}